Friday night we went to Andronaco, the Italian grocery store Antje had told us about (and thankfully she did because we never would have found it on our own!). It is in a more industrial part of town with warehouses all around and from the outside it looks like a big warehouse itself. They had a huge selection of pastas, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, wine, grappa, expresso/coffee, etc. I was so excited to see they carry ricotta cheese! I haven’t found it in any German grocery stores and have been wanted to make lasagna and stuffed shells several times. They also had a cream based pasta sauce (it was carbonara instead of alfredo, but it is close enough!) which isn’t carried at the German stores either so that was pretty exciting as well. We spent wayyy too much money in there (just like Antje warned we would), so we’ll have to limit it to special occasions otherwise we’ll go broke. For dinner we enjoyed some ricotta and spinach ravioli with the carbonara sauce on it plus.. steaks! This is the first time we’ve bought steaks here in Germany because they are quite expensive, but it made for a really delicious and special dinner.
I’ve been giving Morgan a hard time ever since we got back from the States since every weekend we were just sitting around the apartment / staying in town. So for Valentine’s I wanted to go somewhere new. We’re starting to run out of places close by to visit that we haven’t already been to in Germany, so we headed over to the Netherlands for the day. Our first stop was Paleis Het Loo near Apledoorn (about 1.5 hours away from us) and after we went 30 minutes farther to Utrecht to walk around the canals and look in the shops. Apeldoorn is a city I the province of Gelderland – does this remind anyone else of A Knights Tale? I always thought it was a made-up place for the movie – turns out it is the largest province in the Netherlands!
Paleis Het Loo was finished in 1686, having being built for stadtholder-king William III and Mary II of England. The palace was a residence of the House of Orange-Nassau from the 17th century until the 1960’s when Queen Wilhelmina died and left it to the state to be a museum. Technically it isn’t a palace, but a “Lust-hof” (a retreat or pleasure house), but its Baroque architecture and its “entre cour et jardin” (situation between a court and garden – similar to Versailles) sure made it look like one to me! The inside is really beautiful – it still has all the original furniture, paintings, decorations, etc. The audio guide had tons of interesting information about the rooms and stories about the royals who had lived there (ie. King William III’s first wife Sophie of Württemberg, was buried in her wedding dress because she said her life ended the day she got married). After finishing in the house we walked around the gardens. Half of it was under construction, but the other side was very impressive.
When we finished up here we headed over to Utrecht. It has lovely canals, similar to Amsterdam, and has man buildings from the Early Middle Ages. We had hoped to go up in the Dom Tower (the tallest church tower in the Netherlands) and to see the inside of the Cathedral of Saint Martin, but unfortunately they close early in the winter and we didn’t make it in time. The view from the tower is supposed to be amazing, so hopefully we’ll make it there again. We enjoyed some fries (with frite sauce on top) and a frikandel special (basically a sausage that has been deep-fried and has mayo, curry ketchup and chopped onion on top). After looking in a few stores (they have lots more options than the town we live in) we grabbed a (Dutch) beer at a café by the canal before heading home. It was fun to hit the road again and I’m really looking forward to our upcoming trip to Stockholm at the end of the month!
